Several times during the day and sometimes at night, 77-year-old Jeong-Suk Cha has to put her 48-year-old son Alex in a sling.

She’s a shade under five feet tall, slight, maybe 120 pounds. He’s about 180 pounds and must be moved carefully.

Like countless other Ontario residents — so many a $100-million class-action suit has just been launched against the province — Jeong-Suk often has to work alone.

First she glides a lift over top of Alex, places colour-coded straps around his body, and pushes the button that lifts the straps and sling.

She then pushes him: to bed, from bed; to the toilet, from the toilet; to a lounge chair, from a lounge chair, to his wheelchair, from his wheelchair.

He spends a lot of his time in his motorized wheelchair, and when he slumps a bit too far, his mother has to reach from behind and pull him up. That recently gave her a four-month stint of bruised ribs.

“I used to say, only age is a number,” says Jeong Suk, her English slightly broken inside a soft Korean accent.

“But now,” she says about her struggles, “the age is right.”

Someone has to stay with Alex 24 hours a day, and despite considerable help from his sister Jin Cha, friend Michael Kerr, and personal support workers, the bulk of the work has fallen to the elderly Korean woman.

“I always talk to him now, ‘Before I die you have to . . .’” Jeong-Suk says but cannot finish because her face bows in tears.

Alex Cha, 48, is lowered to his bed by his mom, Jeong Cha, 78, and guided by his sister, Jin Cha, at their north London condominium on Tuesday, April 11, 2017. (MIKE HENSEN, The London Free Press)

Alex, who has cerebral palsy and spinal cord damage, is on a wait list for a bed in a residential care facility.

Only in the most superficial ways can it be called a wait list. Or perhaps a wait list in the deepest of ways.

Those who run agencies supporting severely physically disabled adults call it the 50-year wait list. If there are 50 people on the list, chances are you’re waiting 50 years to get the support you need.

Years of frustration over waiting for services has boiled over recently, with calls for change in the Ontario legislature and a week ago, a class-action lawsuit filed by Toronto law firm Koskie Minsky.

The lawsuit seeks $100 million in damages for negligence, claiming the Ontario government denies services to developmentally disabled adults through wait lists administered in an “ad hoc, inconsistent and unreasonable manner.”

The inconsistency is apparent in the South West Local Health Integration Network that oversees provincial health-care spending in a region stretching from Tobermory to Lake Erie, and Newbury to Stratford.

If you’re a senior or an adult with moderate physical disabilities, you qualify for a personal support worker. Even in this category, there are 296 people in the local LHIN waiting for help.

If you’re between 18 and 21 with medically complex needs, you qualify for one of 12 beds available across the entire region.

If you’re an adult, not a youth or yet a senior, you have even dimmer prospects.

Officials with the South West LHIN acknowledge they don’t have a handle on the number of medically complex or developmentally delayed adults seeking residential care or how many spaces are available.

“The South West LHIN began working with our partners in 2014 to develop a more comprehensive assisted living model that could support people with more complex medical needs or fragility to live in the community. This type of model is far more intensive and requires 24/7 on-site staff with specialized training,” Michael Barrett said in a written response to questions.

“We do not yet have the fulsome monthly reports available to us to give us more detailed information on the number of referrals, client characteristics or wait list data.”

Last year, Ontario Ombudsman Paul Dube released a report critical of Ontario’s care of developmentally disabled adults including those with cerebral palsy. At the time, there were 9,700 people waiting for residential care across the province.

In the South West LHIN, London’s Participation House has 40 spaces available, and 60 to 90 on the waiting list.

That’s where Alex would like to go.

The brief outline of Alex’s story first came to light three weeks ago when London West New Democrat MPP Peggy Sattler held a news conference at Participation House, then raised the issue in the legislature. Health Minister Dr. Eric Hoskins promised to look into the matter, but acknowledged Ontario’s disabled residents need more help.

At the news conference, Alex’s sister and tireless advocate, Jin Cha, spoke for an allotted two minutes.

She invited The Free Press to take a closer look at the family’s challenges, in an effort to push for the province to provide more housing for adults with complex physical disabilities, like her brother.

“Alex has a sharp brain but he’s trapped in that body,” she says in interviews at the condo he shares with their mother.

Born with cerebral palsy, Alex was an active person for a long time. But he fell in 2004 while brushing his teeth, and suffered neurological and spinal cord damage.

He spent the summer in Parkwood Institute and after, Jin moved to the family house for a while to help her widowed mother look after him. They put a stair glide, porch lift and grab bars in the home to help.

They also put Alex on a wait list for a bed at Participation House.

Over the next 13 years, Alex suffered more falls, including one in 2015 that put him back in Parkwood and left him with a loose bone pinching on his spinal cord, the loss of almost all mobility, and the threat of one more fall killing him.

The family sold their home, and moved Alex and his mother into a condo apartment.

Jin lives in the same building, with her nephew, whom she persuaded to join in the family round-the-clock care.

“We do try to focus on the positive,” Jin says in a visit marked by laughter as well as tears. She often takes a break from telling the story to put a hand on her brother, tease him and confirm with him what she’s saying.

The doctors, the personal support workers, the people she’s been hounding at the LHIN are all kind, she says.

But looking after Alex takes a lot of work. Jin is the organizer. She has created a binder with 69 pages of photographs showing each step of his daily exercises. Another binder for personal support workers contains five sections, toileting (with 64 photographs and instructions), extra clothes to show where they are kept, getting him out of bed (37 photographs with instructions), washing routine (23 pages) and breakfast (five pages).

A full-time teacher, Jin figures she spends an average of two hours each day organizing personal support worker schedules, doctor’s appointments, regular blood tests and other chores. She’s the one who makes sure he continues to get the assessments to stay on the wait list.

Alex is allowed a personal support worker for 90 hours a month, although Jin has fought hard enough to get that bumped up to 140 until the end of April.

The only time her mother can get out of the house or take a break on weekdays is during a four-hour personal support worker visit. On Sundays, she rushes to church and back while the family helps.

The rest of the days, suffering from arthritis herself, Jeong-Suk has to do Alex’s physio and massages, wash his clothes — sometime soiled — make his meals, brush his teeth, turn him so he doesn’t get bed sores, scratch him when he’s itchy, shower him and on and on.

“I can’t get her recharged. She doesn’t know what that is,” Jin says.

As her mother ages, Jin has stepped up efforts to get Alex into residential care.

“We are a private family, but we can’t keep quiet anymore. We don’t have a voice.”

She has prepared packages of information for the LHIN and The Free Press, including his discharge documents from Parkwood.

“Client should receive total assistance for AM and PM routine (bathing, dressing, grooming, toileting) and feeding.”

The alternative offered to men and women like Alex is long-term care, with seniors.

Alex is not a senior. He spends hours online at night communicating with others.

“He has a sharp brain. Everything works. He tells really bad jokes but he thinks he’s funny,” Jin says, turning to smile at him and tap his knee.

When he was told he had to live in a seniors’ home, Alex wanted to talk to the family doctor.

Jin starts to cry when she explains why.

“What he’s saying is he would rather die than go into a nursing home. It’s a death sentence. It’s like I’m choosing my mom’s life over his.”

In the package prepared for the LHIN is a note from Alex, typed out slowly with the index finger of his one good hand, his right, on his computer.

The thought of going to long-term care: “I rather die if I have to go there. I really need help.”

But the note contains humour as well.

“My family members can’t take care of me because they got to work & to be honest their patience is nothing writing home about sometimes.”

In a short visit at his home, Alex’s humour often breaks through his damaged body.

It’s a sign of the life inside that his family wants to keep alive.

“It’s not your fault,” Jin says after detailing the strain on the family. “I’m just trying to be a voice for you.”

Alex tries to say something. I love you, perhaps.

“We’d come and visit you every day,” Jin promises.

Alex roars in laughter, reacting the same way every adult would at that thought.